The history of the legendary Harry’s Bar goes back to 1930 –  the middle of the depression and to the bar of another hotel, the Hotel Europa-Britannia  in Venice. Three Americans were staying there at the time – a young student known as Harry Pickering*, his aunt and her lover – all of them seeing little of the city and slightly too much of the bar. They began their day at around 11h00 in the morning when they enjoyed aperitifs before lunch and terrace, returned again in the afternoon and again in the evening.  As is often the case when people drink too much, a bitter argument followed and the aunt and her lover left, leaving

Harry behind with a mountain of unpaid bills.  The visits became fewer and Giuseppe Cipriani, a bartender working there at the time, took pity on him and asked him whether the problem was a health problem or a financial one. It turned out to be financial and with true Italian generosity, lent him 10,000 lires – his entire life’s savings, money that would have purchased him his own bar. Pickering left but returned two years later and repaid his debt plus interest, returning 50,000 lires to Cipriani, who, after all this time, could buy his bar and, in gratitude, named it for Harry Pickering. Today it’s well known amongst the wealthy and the famous and, frankly, out of reach of the ordinary Venetians – except maybe for the coffee which isn’t too expensive. It was here that the Bellini and carpaccio was first created.

Ingredients

• 125 g very thinly sliced fillet of well hung organic beef
• 1 large, beautiful artichoke – ask the greengrocer for one that can be eaten raw
• ½ lemon, juice only
• Malden sea salt, to taste
• Extra virgin olive oil, to drizzle
• Shavings of parmesan to taste
• Bread to serve

Method

• First prepare the artichoke by trimming away the outer leaves and cutting a slice off the top.
• Halve** the artichoke and remove the hairy choke and cut each half into fine slices – about a mm thick.
• If you like, you could put the slices of beef between two sheets of cling wrap and roll them with a rolling pin to make them until they are quite thin – if necessary, that is.
• Arrange them flat on a large plate, slightly overlapping – but not too much.
• Scatter the artichoke slices on top and drizzle with lemon juice, sprinkle with salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.
• Serve with bread, an additional drizzle of olive oil and a plain rocket salad.

* He was, according to some sources, a businessmen.

**If you aren’t going to use the artichoke immediately, keep in a little water with lemon juice so that it doesn’t become brown.